Hi everyone.
Here's my report (ramblings!)
Started off the week by travelling down to Gatwick on the Saturday afternoon and booked into the Gatwick Europa hotel. Although the hotel was a bit shabby in a few areas it was a nice start to the holiday as we didnt have to get up early and travel down all in the one go. The hotel had a pool, jacuzzi, gym etc. All pretty good for the price of £130 for two twin rooms, parking for 8 days and transfer by bus. (as opposed to a cramped mini bus that you get from some hotels)
Got to the airport about 3 on the Sunday morning to meet some friends that had travelled up from Eastbourne to join us for the week.
Flight was fine, even though the film they showed was pretty boring (The Invincibles. Due to a good tail wind it only took about 2 hours, twenty minutes.
A nice journey up on the coach took us 2 and a half hours and we were given loads of information from our crystal rep.
As was mentioned in another thread, we wearn't very impressed with being asked to disembark in the carpark and trek upto our hotel (Club A) This wasnt an easy task with suitcases, ski bags and boot bags!!
Hotel......
Club A....... Very clean and tidy, we had a triple room as my son was joining us for his first skiing holiday and the room was more than adequate for us. The food was excellent and there was loads of choice for both breakfast and evening dinner.
Only two (very minor) gripes... Damn it was hot!!! We didnt have the radiator on in our room at all for the week and it was so hot. (Rather that than it being freezing cold!) and they only had bottled beer at 140 dinars each. I was quite happy with this until we have a drink in the grand where we had draught beer for the same price, but twice the amount.
We had a couple of lunches in the grand hotel and the pizzas were excellent. The most expensive being only 500dinars.
Skiing........
Monday and Tuesday wasn't a particuly enjoyable experiance with regards to the piste conditions. The whole resort was in desperate need of snow as there were bare and icy patches everywhere. It was a great relief to pull back the bedroom curtains on Wedneday morning to see a huge dump of snow had occured overnight. I'd had a text from a mate saying that 5cm was forcast for the Wednesday. Well more than double that must have come down in the early hours of the morning. It then skied on and off for the rest of the week including another largeish dump on Wednesday night.
The Fog made it very "intresting" at times especially when we travelled up to the top on the "Pancic Express" chairlift on Wednesday morning. You couldnt see the Chair in front of you! Myself and a friend decided to take it slow and as there wasnt anyone else around at the time that we could follow, we took the run down under the lift. Well... We think it was a run, but it soon became apparent that it hadnt been pisted and it was great fun hacking down on our blades through a foot of powder!!!!
Favorite run for me?..... The Black number 6. Great snow conditions later in the week although it wouldnt be a black in many resorts i've been to in the past.
Ski School......
Three of our group booked into ski school and every single one of them had a great time.
My son was the only beginnner out of the three and actually had two instructors. Marco for the first two hours and Dragona for the second two hours.
He went from total beginnner to being a confident parellell skier in only six days!
At the Ski School party on Saturday evening it was great for him to get an "A" on his diploma!
The others went into intermediates classes and they said that the instructers improved thier techneques immensly as well as giving them good knowledge and stories of the local area, geography etc. (Alex was one of the instructers, cant remember the name of the other)
Apres Ski....
As we were away as a family we didnt do the pub/club scene so cant comment on that side of things, but we did go out on the Skidoo evening. An evening that turned out to be rather intresting. We spent nearly an hour whizzing around the locals mountains in near blizzard conditions with my son on the skidoo with me. My Mrs and her mate were on the skidoo two in front of me and a we were nearing the end it very nearly ended up very nasty.
As we were slowing down to go over and few humps and through some tress, she slowed her skiddoo to get through the pisted section and she managed to get her front ski over the edge of a ditch and managed to roll the skidoo into the ditch and into a tree with the skidoo trapped on top of them. Everyone hit the stop switch on thier skidoos and myself a friend managed to pull it off of them whilst they scrambled out.
Luckilly they were both ok (apart from a few brusies) and after the skiddoo was pulled out they carreid on til the end.
We were booked to go on the Quiz night but the Mrs went down with Flu so we gave that a miss, but the rest of the group went and had a great time, and came second.
Sledging was also fun in the evening.
To sum everything up, we all had a great time, and wouldnt hesitate to go back again.
If anyone wants to take a look at our photos, here's the link......
http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slidesho...Uy=c5ju7c&Ux=0
Just hit the "play" button to start the slideshow.
Anybody whose off soon and has any questions, just ask.
Marc
